Samsung has been pretty competitive in semiconductor market for quite some time now. The company's foundry arm already produces 14nm FinFET-based chipsets for the likes of AMD and Qualcomm. Samsung recently announced that it has already started the industry-first mass production of 10nm-based SoC (probably the Exynos 8895 and the Snapdragon 830 which would be used in the Galaxy S8). Now, Samsung has showcased improved 14nm and 10nm fabrication technologies to its customers and partners.
Samsung Electronics is expanding its semiconductor manufacturing technology offerings with the introduction of fourth-generation 14nm (14LPU) and third-generation 10nm (10LPU) to its customers. These new fabrication processes will be used to manufacture next-generation chipsets that are meant to be used in products ranging from smartphones to automobiles. The company presented these new technologies during the Samsung Foundry Forum at its Device Solutions America headquarters earlier today.
The South Korean electronics giant claims that its new 14nm LPU technology delivers higher performance at the same power compared to its third-generation 14nm LPC technology. The company said that its new 14nm technology would be better suited for high-performance and compute-intensive applications. Coming to Samsung's 10nm LPU offering, the technology will provide area reduction compared to previous generation (10LPE and 10LPP) processes, which means that 10nm LPU-based chipsets would be even smaller in size.
Ben Suh, Senior Vice President of foundry marketing at Samsung Electronics, said, “Samsung is very confident with our technology definitions that provide design advantages on an aggressive process with manufacturability considerations. We have received tremendous positive market feedback and are looking forward to expanding our leadership in the advanced process technology space.” Process design kits for 14LPU and 10LPU technologies will be available to customers during the second quarter of 2017.
Samsung also updated its customers at the event regarding its plans to offer chips based on 7nm EUV technology and showcased wafer based on the new process. Samsung's rival TSMC is currently offering 16nm FinFET technology to customers including Apple (for A10 Fusion SoC), but it has already promised that it would start offering 10nm-based chips by the end of 2016 and 7nm-based chips in 2017. ARM has even announced 10nm-based Artemis CPU core and a single-core GPU based on TSMC's 10nm technology as a proof of concept.
